How I got into Smart’s iPhone 6+ plan

I got frustrated with the stagnation of Windows Phone and got fed up with Globe Telecoms anti-consumer FUP bs that I, one July weekened, went to Smart to get an iPhone plan. And you know what, I’m happy with this decision.

I supported Microsoft’s mobile offering since WP7. I would have wanted them to succeed, but Microsoft’s propensity to shoot itself on the foot really hurt Windows Phone. A lot of apps were either missing, infinitely inferior, or stagnated into obsolescence – never updated for years on end, and when they finally do get updated, it never seems to be to catch up with features currently available on the leading platforms. Add to that the insult of having Microsoft itself release its own apps (including Cortana, which WP users outside US and select countries can’t even use) on the competitions’ respective platforms that are often not only better versions, but sometimes even released on the other platforms first, complete with regular updates. Meanwhile on WP, users always got the ‘coming soon’ treatment, which may or may not actually come to reality. To say this is a frustrating endeavor for someone who supports them is grossly understating it. It’s hard to keep supporting a company which doesn’t seem to value its own loyal userbase, small though it may be.

The Globe Fair Usage Policy is anything but. Well, on Globe’s side it’s proven to be a boon to their bottomline. The users on the other hand are left shortchanged. For months, I have been subscribing to a month-long “unlimited” data bundle, and generally got along fine. A few months ago, I was 10 days or so into my subscription when I apparently hit their daily limit. Before that, I’ve mostly just been tweeting with occasional surfing on the side. The connection slowed down to a crawl, tweets won’t load, websites won’t render. The next day, connection didn’t improved. As it was the weekend after that, I’ve been on wi-fi at home. Come Monday, the connection still was so slow it was unusable. I tweeted about it (not using cellular) and Globe’s army of PR apologists were fast to reply. Their empty sorries just made me angry, their tweets nothing useful or helpful. There I was, barely halfway into my subscription period and I can’t even use the service I have already paid for. That’s when Globe lost me as a customer.

Smart’s signal is not that good at work owing to the place being owned by the same owners of Globe, but it’s tolerable. At my folks’ place, during the weekends I visit, I get excellent reception from Smart that I bought a prepaid SIM that I’d use on the one or two days I was there. More importantly, despite Smart having its own policy, I found they are more lax with enforcing data limits.

That is what lead me to get the iPhone 2k plan. I figured if I go prepaid I’d be paying Php 1,000 per month anyway. Another thousand more (plus a reasonable cash-out) and I can actually get the 128GB 6+ model. 10GB per month is more than enough for my weekdays commute. Even allowing a couple family members to tether, I barely use half of that.

As I write this I just updated an iPhone 5 to iOS 9. I wouldn’t have been able to do that with Globe even on a plan.